


there'll be sun (tomorrow)

by ohboyohno



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Awesome Dean Winchester, Big Brother Dean, But no, Coda, Depressed Sam Winchester, Depression, Emotionally Hurt Sam Winchester, Episode: s15e04 Atomic Monsters, Gen, Hurt Sam Winchester, Hurt/Comfort, I don't know how to write plot and/or scenes but I feel things so this is what you get, I have to do everything myself, Post-Episode: s15e04 Atomic Monsters, Protective Dean Winchester, References to Depression, Sam Winchester Needs Some Milk, Sam Winchester Needs a Hug, if you don't like it then blame it on all those assholes who i was counting on, only sam and dean are actually in the story everyone else is mentioned, to write a coda for this episode
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-10
Updated: 2019-11-10
Packaged: 2021-01-26 17:37:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,564
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21377941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ohboyohno/pseuds/ohboyohno
Summary: All gone is here todayFinding room to breatheGo on beyond your wayAnd see
Relationships: Castiel & Sam Winchester, Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester, Jack Kline & Sam Winchester, Rowena MacLeod & Sam Winchester
Comments: 8
Kudos: 92





	there'll be sun (tomorrow)

**Author's Note:**

> There's really nothing explicit in this but it does deal a lot with Sam's hopelessness and depression so please read with caution if you might get triggered by that sort of thing. 
> 
> Anyway, this episode was amazing. I love ActionAckles, Jared Padalecki is a gem but fuck him for making me cry, and wow the bastard really jumped out with Chuck didn't it?

Morning came and nothing had changed. 

His shoulder throbbed to the beat of consciousness, a pain both disjointed and continuous, inwards and outwards, concentrated and all-consuming. It built a fog around his mind, gave him a hazier wakefulness than appropriate in response to another, somehow even more twisted, nightmare of an evil version of himself killing innocents. Killing his brother. Then again, maybe not. What’s there to be startled awake by when his actual nightmares are so similar to the one he calls reality? Sure, there’s a few plot points moved around. Maybe he kept drinking demon blood. Maybe he never left Mystery Spot. Maybe he said Yes four years ago, or maybe he never did. Hell, maybe he never got that full ride. 

But none of that matters. None of the context—the fluff, the torture and the torment, the horrible means that have always led to the equally horrible ends—matters. Because, in his reality, he’s been involved in some shape or form with the death of every single person that he’s held dear. Hell, he stabbed Rowena straight through the stomach last week, felt the blade as it tore at skin and muscle and sinew. Whatever his mind tries to torture him with, he won’t wake up to find his real hands any less tainted with blood than his dream ones. 

When his eyes open and all he sees is a bare wall and all he hears is the quiet shifting of an underground bunker, he doesn’t find any relief. 

The analog clock sitting on his nightstand reveals the early time and the reason for the encompassing silence he’s woken up to, despite the fact that they’d gotten in late the previous night after deciding that it would be easier to drive back in one go, especially with how bittersweet the ending to the hunt had been. It’s not every day that the monsters they hunted were a child, a victim in his own right, and his parents, desperate to protect him. It’s unfair, he knows, but he’s almost jealous of the parents, of how they got to do what he hadn’t. Jack’s powers were too strong, too far-reaching, and with his soul gone, he hadn’t even been the kid that they’d loved, the one that they’d wanted to save. It’s a small measure, too small to truly count as comfort, but at least he and that vampire kid both went out wanting to do good. They were still pure, innocent at heart—untouched by the kind of evil that Sam and Dean grappled with, that Sam’s skin was stained with. 

He realizes he can’t stay like this anymore. Can’t bear to sit in his room any longer and stew in his failures, in every single thing that he’s done and that’s been done to him since he was six months old. He’s itching to move, to go for a jog, to get out of his body and be able to breathe; but, the outside world doesn’t sound all that good either. He can’t look at it right now, see its peace and ignorance and sheer ungratefulness. 

Instead, he settles on sitting in the library with a bottle of whiskey and putting his misery to good use. He’s only been researching for an hour when he hears the sound of his brother’s bare feet treading their way toward him. 

“Good morn— are you seriously drinking at 7 in the morning? After you bitched at me for an entire hour to make you veggie bacon because ‘it’s healthy, Dean!’?”

“Which you still haven’t, by the way.”

“Yeah, and I’m not going to, it’s the thought that counts,” he said, finally coming around the table to sit facing Sam. “And I’m thinking that you’re a hypocrite.”

“Okay.” He hadn’t even lifted his head yet. He didn’t think he could look Dean in the eyes right now. The resounding silence stretches on for a moment too long, long enough that he does eventually lift his head, more out of irritation at Dean’s hovering presence than curiosity. Dean’s entire demeanor has softened, just as it had the night before after Sam had told him that he couldn’t move on. The concern is present in the lines of his brows and it doesn’t help Sam’s mood. “Look, I’m really trying to concentrate on this here, so if you have something to say you should just get it over with.”

“No, no, carry on.” Another beat of silence, and then he’s shifting forward, leaning his arms on the table and into Sam’s personal space. “Then again, I’m also kind of wondering how long you’re going to keep going like this.”

Sam’s head is lowered once again, his pursed lips the only thing giving away his calm demeanor. “I don’t know what you mean.” 

“I mean”—and his tone is sad now, and God, Sam can’t take this right now, can’t handle his brother’s sadness, not if he’s the cause—“how long are you going to pretend to be okay?”

“I didn’t know that I was.”

“No, maybe not. But you’re not doing anything else, either. Look, man, I know you don’t feel free yet. I know these past few months, this entire year, hell, this entire decade has just been one shitshow after another. But you can’t give up _now_. Not after we just finally got free of Chuck and his bullshit. We’re meant to be putting it behind us, looking to the future!” 

And try as he might, his calm slips. 

“Didn’t we already talk about this? I mean, I can barely handle last week, you want me to put, what, all of it ‘_ behind me’ _ ? You want me to tell you that I-I-I’m fine with the fact that, just in these last two months alone, all of the people that were looking up to me to lead them, to help them, were slaughtered? Right in front of us? In our home? That our kid killed our mom and then God killed our kid and started an apocalypse that I had to-to kill my friend to stop? That I shot God and now I have this goddamn shoulder wound that wo _ n’t stop fUCKING HURTING?! _” 

He had started pacing and raising his voice sometime during his speech, mounting grief and anger at the world building up and spilling over the tight edge of control he’d built for the sake of his own sanity. But he whispers the next part, ashamed at his own mind: “Do you want me to tell you about how well I’ve been sleeping, watching myself kill you every night and being helpless to stop it?”

“No.” 

His brother’s voice is calm, if tinged with sadness, and it’s such a contrast to Sam’s own distraught that it stops him in his tracks, grounding him in the way only Dean can. “Not this time, Sammy. You don’t need to put on a brave face or pretend that you’re okay with what happened, or at all. And I don’t need to either. That’s what I’m trying to tell you, man. We don’t need to do that anymore. We finally have an inch to breathe, we have time to actually sit down and process. I didn’t mean let it go and forget, Sam. I meant let it go and feel.” 

And maybe it’s the lack of sleep, or the rapid onslaught of trauma after trauma, or, like Dean said, how there’s no more evil on the horizon purposefully gunning for them to always keep his guard up for. Maybe it’s the unconditional love and acceptance in his brother’s eyes. Whatever the case, for the first time since that church six years ago, he feels himself well and truly break down. 

His brother is there in moments, folding Sam into his own arms and keeping his buckling knees from hitting the floor. They sink down together, the wooden floor hard and cold, their posture promising future aches for their aging bodies. But here, clinging to his brother with everything he has, surrounded by the sanctuary that they made their own and that is no less home for its recently empty halls, Sam feels the safest he’s had in a long time. His shoulder still hurts, a pain both disjointed and continuous, inwards and outwards, concentrated and all-consuming. His hands are still stained with the blood of the people he’s lost and his heart and mind are heavy with grief and fatigue so exhausting that he can’t sleep. But Chuck is gone, Cas is out there, somewhere, safe and alive, and Dean...Dean is right here, whispering mindless platitudes he’s desperately trying to believe in, more for Sam’s sake than his own. Solid and warm as he’s ever been, holding him up as he’s always done. 

The hunt’s not over—it’ll never be over, not for them. But that’s okay. The Sam Winchester who wanted a normal life with the white picket fence and blessed ignorance, he’s gone. He feels washed up and diluted, broken in ways that he’ll never be able to fully repair. But maybe he can finally try. Maybe he can still find that light at the end of the tunnel that he’d promised to drag Dean to. His hope is just a placebo, but it works all the same. With each passing moment, breathing gets a little easier. He feels a little more free. 


End file.
